Quote from: ShieldWife on May 31, 2021, 04:55:31 AM
All role playing game rules are a matter of consensus, the GM might technically make the ruling, but everyone at the table (play and GM alike) are there by their own consent to have fun and can always vote with their feet if the game stops being fun. The GM has greater authority over the running of the game, power which is given to him by the players' cooperation. Role playing games work because of cooperation, rather than competition, between players and GM.

RPGPundit, can you please ban ShieldWife?

This amount of common sense and clarity is dangerous to this forum, and really, to the hobby as a whole.

Quote from: PencilBoy99 on May 30, 2021, 10:58:03 PM
In the new vampire 5E the table decides what the chronicle tenants are (essentially the new humanity rules). In fate the table decides of aspects pass the sniff test. The GM is always going to be in the minority in any vote. Why would a player ever rationally choose to be restricted?  I'm sure if I ask my players after they got wrecked by some sanity damage in Gumshoe if they should eliminate these sanity rules they would say yes, in the long run restrictive play produces immersive thematic gaming but in the moment you'd never ask for it.  When I ran my a one ring game the fact that players got damaged and accumulated shadow over time made for a really interesting story but if I had asked at the beginning of the game would you want to risk getting worse no one would say yes.

You're not the first to have noticed this.

Quote from: Vincent Baker
As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of an rpg's rules is to create the unwelcome and the unwanted in the game's fiction. The reason to play by rules is because you want the unwelcome and the unwanted - you want things that no vigorous creative agreement would ever create. And it's not that you want one person's wanted, welcome vision to win out over another's - that's weak sauce. (*) No, what you want are outcomes that upset every single person at the table. You want things that if you hadn't agreed to abide by the rules' results, you would reject.

And while players would never rationally choose to be restricted, they will between restrictions, and games which provide such choices tend to have more gravitas than the ones where the player simply decides. It's yet another reason system matters.

Quote from: Spinachcat on June 23, 2021, 11:49:46 PM
RPGPundit, can you please ban ShieldWife?

This amount of common sense and clarity is dangerous to this forum, and really, to the hobby as a whole.

Agreed. Burn the witch! (j/k ShieldWife; it's all in good fun . . . probably didn't need to clarify, but I worry sometimes)

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on June 24, 2021, 11:20:16 AM
You're not the first to have noticed this.

I'm curious what they actually noticed, though. Everything in the OP is strictly a people problem that, sorry to say, no rules are going to fix. I have given it some thought, though, and instead of "how horrible are the people you game with that you would say such a thing?" I think I should have gone with something more like "How would the people you game with feel if they knew you thought so little of them?" Because he's literally accusing them of being a hair's breadth away from doing some totally underhanded stuff at the table, restrained only by . . . the traditional GM/player structure that is by far the most prevalent, I guess. The rules you voluntarily agree with the other players to use, whatever they are, just don't have the power to change someone like that. I've never looked at a rule in any game and thought about what the worst type of player would do with it, much less assumed that gamers in general would suddenly turn bad if it was in play. That's just ridiculous. I reiterate, most gamers are good people. 2 decades full of con games and online games with many, many strangers(I'd estimate between 200 and 300, though I don't have an exact count) tells me that.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on June 24, 2021, 11:20:16 AM

Quote from: Vincent Baker
As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of an rpg's rules is to create the unwelcome and the unwanted in the game's fiction. The reason to play by rules is because you want the unwelcome and the unwanted - you want things that no vigorous creative agreement would ever create. And it's not that you want one person's wanted, welcome vision to win out over another's - that's weak sauce. (*) No, what you want are outcomes that upset every single person at the table. You want things that if you hadn't agreed to abide by the rules' results, you would reject.

And while players would never rationally choose to be restricted, they will between restrictions, and games which provide such choices tend to have more gravitas than the ones where the player simply decides. It's yet another reason system matters.

Yeah, a lot of players will often choose to be restricted. I've seen it happen quite a bit. There's really no reason to claim otherwise. You get the occasional power gamer or min/maxer(not all power gamers or min/maxers, of course; I've known quite a few who were perfectly able to switch gears if you were open and honest about expectations beforehand) who doesn't really seem to grasp why anyone would do so. But again, for most of them it's just a preferred play style and they'll just say "not how I like to play; I'll sit this one out." The ones who get told beforehand, are given a chance to check over the rules before agreeing to them, and then who voluntarily agree to them and still cause trouble are thankfully few and far between.

I also noticed this:

Quote from: Vince Baker
if all your formal rules do is structure your group's ongoing agreement about what happens in the game, they are a) interchangeable with any other rpg rules out there, and b) probably a waste of your attention.

This sets up such a strawman. I know quite a few games with some rules that do some of that stuff(to one degree or another), but . . . almost never just that. These kinds of rules tend to be a small portion of the overall rulesets they're attached to. The games in the OP certainly don't fit that description. And let's be honest. Even if it was accurate, "Other games can do that, too" is not really a compelling argument.

It's kind of like attacking D&D by saying "if all your rules do is let you fight things, you can do that in any system." Any gamer familiar with D&D will know something's not right with that argument. While combat rules are a large chunk, sure, there is other stuff there. Quite a bit of it, in fact. It's basically a non-starter because I'd have assumed something about D&D that is obviously false to anyone actually knowledgeable about the subject. Same here. I like some of Vincent Baker's stuff.

I actually find the fact that it's Vincent Baker of all people saying such things funny, considering the games he has personally made have some of those rules. I mean, he's the father of Powered by the Apocalypse ffs. I had to look that up. So I actually have my suspicions that that article is about something else more specific, because it's obviously inapplicable to the games mentioned in the OP, and definitely not true of Apocalypse World itself. Just an odd suspicion that he's not attacking his own work here.

Quote from: Spinachcat on June 23, 2021, 11:49:46 PM

Quote from: ShieldWife on May 31, 2021, 04:55:31 AM
All role playing game rules are a matter of consensus, the GM might technically make the ruling, but everyone at the table (play and GM alike) are there by their own consent to have fun and can always vote with their feet if the game stops being fun. The GM has greater authority over the running of the game, power which is given to him by the players' cooperation. Role playing games work because of cooperation, rather than competition, between players and GM.

RPGPundit, can you please ban ShieldWife?

This amount of common sense and clarity is dangerous to this forum, and really, to the hobby as a whole.

I'm sorry to inform you but there is no such thing as common sense, more like uncommon sense....because if it was common, everyone would have it